Simple complex systems are too complex to be simple enough ...!
Okay, so this is a bit more technical, but the important thing is that unintelligent systems (= they are simple) that are complex (= have complex dynamics) are bad at adapting to different circumstances.
Also, these systems are products of design trade offs. (We want things to be cheap and get done fast, and also politically okay, and so on.) And thus they are not robust enough, nor resilient enough. They are fragile. (Taleb laments a lot about how antifragiltiy is different from robustness and resilience. And sure, they are because he uses a model in which they are.)
And the book talks about what is needed for anti-fragility, and it turns out that some kind of feedback loop that optimizes for certain problems. Or of course intelligence.
The core point you missed in antifragile is inference in the presence of uncertainty - a conservative barbell like strategy (80-20 rule or 90-10 rule). This is very easy to overlook but this to me was the key takeaway - in structuring a portfolio, picking art projects etc.
I left it out, because I'm not convinced it works. For example it doesn't respond well to shocks. The whole market goes down. Your portfolio shrinks. (Sure, probably it can be structured as a semi-passive fund, that buys when the market is low, and moves back to more doomsday assets when it starts to fall.)
As an example, what sort of portfolio should you set up for your money. Taleb's recommendation is to avoid all kinds of "risk-modeling" and to invest 80 - 90% in highly conservative investments and the remaining 10% in ultra risky ones. He calls this a barbell investment. Positive black swan events from the ultra risky bets will still get you a nice return and the negative black swan events won't wipe you out.
Fat tailed probability distributions are fat tailed...! Assuming normal distribution underestimates risky events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution
> and Antifragile
Simple complex systems are too complex to be simple enough ...!
Okay, so this is a bit more technical, but the important thing is that unintelligent systems (= they are simple) that are complex (= have complex dynamics) are bad at adapting to different circumstances.
Also, these systems are products of design trade offs. (We want things to be cheap and get done fast, and also politically okay, and so on.) And thus they are not robust enough, nor resilient enough. They are fragile. (Taleb laments a lot about how antifragiltiy is different from robustness and resilience. And sure, they are because he uses a model in which they are.)
And the book talks about what is needed for anti-fragility, and it turns out that some kind of feedback loop that optimizes for certain problems. Or of course intelligence.